Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 6:04 am Post subject: How much time do ESL teachers have on their hands?

I'm thinking about the possibility of teaching English in Taiwan. Can someone please tell me, how many hours of work do ESL teachers in Taiwan have each week? And how much time do you get for free-time (assuming you're making standard full-time salary) each day? Because full-time in Taiwan is quite a bit different than full time in the US, right?

I would say the average is about 20-22ish hours a week. I know some people who teach 15 hours a week and make enough money to get by but have a lot of free time to do whatever. Some people work 30 hours a week who make a decent amount of $$$ but it kinda of like working a full time 40 hours a week back home. My ideal number is 25 hours a week, enough to save and enough free time to.

You are not going to get $1000 - $1300 teaching at universities in China, at least not if it is your first time. Check the job boards and you will see that the rate is $800 - $1000 for the bulk of positions advertised.

Most teaching jobs in Taiwan will involve about 20 hours of actual teaching with some requiring you to turn up half an hour early and grade homework. I would say that you should add at least 1 hour per day you work in a cram school, so 20 hours would be about 25 hours if you worked 5 days a week. Also, some school have downtime between classes, so you will be twiddling your thumbs while waiting for your next class.

You are not going to get $1000 - $1300 teaching at universities in China, at least not if it is your first time. Check the job boards and you will see that the rate is $800 - $1000 for the bulk of positions advertised.

Most teaching jobs in Taiwan will involve about 20 hours of actual teaching with some requiring you to turn up half an hour early and grade homework. I would say that you should add at least 1 hour per day you work in a cram school, so 20 hours would be about 25 hours if you worked 5 days a week. Also, some school have downtime between classes, so you will be twiddling your thumbs while waiting for your next class.

A native English speaker should not be working for less than 6000RMB in China=$950 US.

A person should work for what the market is going to pay. You are only misleading yourself if you "think" you are worth an amount that no-one wants to pay. However, this discussion is more suited to the China forum, so I won't continue with it.

A person should work for what the market is going to pay. You are only misleading yourself if you "think" you are worth an amount that no-one wants to pay. However, this discussion is more suited to the China forum, so I won't continue with it.

Exactly that is what the market is paying.

And please read closely, I didn't say a native speaker was worth 6000RMB a month.

There are non- native English speakers teaching English in universities in China getting 5000RMB a month.

Last edited by JZer on Tue Mar 06, 2012 11:19 pm; edited 1 time in total

He said he was thinking about coming to Taiwan. Not that he had definitly made up his mind to come to China.

Seeing as you are criticizing my ability to read, I think it is only fair to point out that using 'come to' in conjunction with a location implies that the speaker (or writer) is in that location.

If you are not in China, then a more accurate sentence would have been.
'Not that he had definitly (sic) made up his mind to go to China'

As regards your current location - you're right I didn't notice your current location was listed as Russia and made the assumption that you had gone to China because - well - that's where you told everyone on this forum that you were going...